Iranian Nukes: Be Afraid, Be Somewhat Afraid

Since nuclear proliferation has provoked so much debate, I thought I’d offer up a more focused post on dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. While reasonable people agree that a nuclear-armed Tehran is by no means desirable, they can disagree about what price we should be willing to pay to prevent this from happening. Matt Yglesias succinctly sums up this view in his post, “Iranian Nukes: So What?” Well, here’s what: we don’t want a radical anti-American regime with links to terrorist organizations to have nuclear weapons. It’s another version of the Pakistan problem—there may in fact be powerful figures in the country crazy enough to let slip nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. That said, the prospect of state-ending retaliation may be enough to give these people pause. Now, let me call again on Fareed Zakaria as an expert witness. He suggests that the most likely dangers are geopolitical. A nuclear Iran, in his view, would prompt Egypt and Saudi Arabia to start looking into these weapons. More ominously, Israel would not sit by idly as Tehran closed in on a working bomb and would likely launch a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. At which point, the world’s most strategically important region would presumably spontaneously combust. And you thought we had problems now. So, what can we do to head all this off? Well, one thing we can’t do in the short-term is invade. Just take a look at Tom Ricks’ pieces in the Washington Post to learn the tale of an Army that has been badly battered by its deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. You know the story: overextended units, stop-loss orders, damaged materiel, and two nasty insurgencies to deal with. Besides, with a large, highly motivated, highly nationalist army and nearly four times the territory and three times the population of Iraq, war with Iran would not be the type of military engagement once charmingly called a cakewalk. That leaves Zakaria’s recommended option, closing ranks with the Europeans and threatening tougher economic sanctions and the possibility of airstrikes, while dangling the carrot of direct negotiations and perhaps even normalized relations with the United States. That may be the best we can do for now. Looking to the future, our and the Iranians best hope is that the so-called Third Force, the embittered generation born after 1979 who have known nothing other than life in a dystopian theocratic experiment, can organize, topple the regime, and build some kind of decent state. After delivering 25 years of political repression and economic stagnation, the mullahs are certainly vulnerable. Interestingly, the students leading the democracy movement say that the best thing the United States can do to help them is not to get involved in Iran’s internal power struggles, so that the students can’t be tarred as traitors by the conservative hardliners.